A Few Quick Things, and the Worst Cars We’ve Ever Owned

Today I’m having lunch with Steve, and one of our old classmates from Dunbar High. His name is Chuck, and he’s up here for the Pocono NASCAR race. As far as I know, I haven’t seen him since graduation day in 1981. Or, you know… thereabouts. Should be interesting.

Chuck was a cross country runner, with Steve, but I didn’t know him very well. The only running I did in high school was from pissed off motorists, after I hit their car with a snowball. Or an apple. Or a dirt clod. So, you see, my running was borne of a much less formal discipline.

In any case, I’m looking forward to it. It’s always good to see folks from the old days. Well, not always… In fact, I don’t know why I even typed such a blatant lie. But it’ll be good to see Chuck. Tomorrow I’ll let you know how it went.

I left an obvious entry off my recent ‘50 Signs You Might Be A Pain In The Ass’ list: You tell everyone your dog is a “rescue.” That means you got him at the pound, which is a good thing. But (I’m sorry to have to break the news to you) it doesn’t turn you into a 9/11 fireman. Rescue? Hmmm… That kinda takes the spotlight off the dog and puts it squarely on you, doesn’t it? And qualifies you as a pain in the ass.

Speaking of dogs, I gave Andy a bath a few nights ago. It’s always an ordeal, so it doesn’t happen very often. Nobody else will do it, and I try to put if off as long as possible. He fights and wiggles and shakes and dribbles pee everywhere… He’s the most neurotic dog I’ve ever met. He’s the Richard Lewis of dogs.

But I got him scrubbed down and rinsed, and he smells slightly better. And after it was done, he ran around the house for ten minutes, frolicking like a pup. He seems to love it once it’s over, and fears it like the dentist drill before it happens.

Crazy hound… He’s neurotic, his breath smells like an open grave, he aggressively begs for food, barks at everyone who walks past our house, licks his feet, jumps up on the bed and lines his ass up with my face, complicates our travel plans, and shits up our yard. Yet he makes me happy, just by wandering into the room. It’s a difficult thing to understand.

You know what I miss? Those gigantic Circuit City receipts. Remember those? You’d go in there to buy a Fountains of Wayne CD, and a three-yard length of paper would come scrolling out of the register. The cashier would have to stand there and wait for it to stop printing, then fold it in half a couple of times, before handing it to you.

I think they went out of business because of those receipts. The cost of paper sank them, I believe. But I appreciated the absurdity of it all. And miss it.

Finally, since I started by mentioning NASCAR, I’ll bring it back around and end this update with a Question about cars. Specifically: What’s the worst piece of shit you’ve ever owned?

Thankfully, I’ve never had any really bad cars. So far I’ve never driven an $800 hunk o’ junk that might catch fire at any minute, or something like that. Of course, the day’s young… But I certainly had a couple of vehicles that were infuriating.

The first was a 1989 Hyundai Excel. I bought it new, when I lived in Atlanta. I thought it looked like a freaking Mercedes Benz, despite the price tag of $8000. And for the first 100,000 miles, it was a good car. But once I passed over that threshold, there was a full collapse.

It was one thing after another: everything was breaking in alphabetical order. And while I was standing on a car lot trying (desperately) to negotiate a trade-in deal… I could see – in my peripheral vision – a river of oil coming from the Hyundai, straight toward me and the salesman.

It was a disposable car, at a disposable price. But I was poor and was trying to squeeze a few more years out of it. And it turned into a low-grade nightmare.

My worst car experience, however, was chronicled right here at the website: a 1999 total turd of a Chevy Blazer. It wasn’t cheap, was nearly new when I bought it, and had every electrical problem known to man. Oh god, just picturing that shitbox raises my blood pressure. Wow! Every issue – and there were many – cost $700.

That Blazer nearly drove me to tears, prison, and the nuthouse. I had frequent visions of torching it, or rolling it off a cliff. I swore I’d never buy another American car, which probably wasn’t fair. But so far… I’ve been sticking with Japan.

Now it’s your turn. What’s the worst car you’ve ever owned? Please tell us about its unique features and charms in the comments section below.

Comments

THE WORST CAR.. You mention the BLAZER.. I to bought one.. In my mind.. This is what the family needs.. a good SUV.. 4wheel drive.. leather interior… just a nice ride..

Until…

36k miles.. the warranty.. runs out at 36k miles.. the odometer.. 36,190. I smell anti-freeze. I take it back to the dealer. The mechanic came out to the car.. told me “Yea.. they all do that”.. It blew the intake manifold gasket. I found out.. GM was using the “Enviro” anti-freeze .. so it wouldn’t kill dogs lapping it up in a puddle.. and the anti-freeze .. ate the gasket, and you had to replace it with the gasket that wouldn’t get eaten by the “Enviro” freeze. GM .. wasn’t going to cover it.. 190 miles over the warranty going out.. I called GM in Detroit.. told them .. I’d burn it on the parking lot .. in front of GOD & everyone if it’s not fixed.. They fixed it.. but only paid HALF… so … I ate it..

Other stuff that fell of the car between 36k and 75k.. 2 water pumps.. 2 batteries.. passenger seat collapsed backwards.. (My wife is at best 135lbs).. 2 window motors…the best was my windshield motor breaking the wiper arms.. and they shot off the car in a storm.. (that was fun).. other knobs.. handles..just broke off .. and

Finally .. we’re at 75k.. I smelled anti-freeze.. took it back.. you guessed it.. the intake manifold was blown again.. The mechanic used the exact same gasket that the anti-freeze ate the first time..

Today.. I buy things that end in “UNDAY”..”UKI”..”ONDA”.. No more stuff built here.. I hate it ..but, crap.. just aint’ worth it..

The ONDAs, at least, are built here, if by “here” you mean “Ohio”. Many “foreign” cars are built in the US – Toyota, Honda, Mercedes, BMW,… probably missing a few.

The Blazer in particular is well known as a spectacular example of hot garbage, but even a piece of shit like that wouldn’t kill the company’s reputation so much if the manufacturer and dealers had a better attitude toward customer service. How much better would the head gasket incident have been if the dealer had said “we are SO sorry, Big John. We’ll take care of it right away. No charge, of course. And here’s a free loaner car for you while we do the work.”
.

The worst car I ever owned was a 79 Ford Fiesta. It was a tin can and a rust bucket, however it’s worst attribute was that it wouldn’t idle properly. Any time you had to stop it would die. To correct the problem, I adjusted the throttle higher. This caused engine to rev like crazy whenever I stopped, attracting looks from any pedestrians standing nearby. The ultimate solution was to adjust the throttle to normal levels then when approaching a stopping point I would put the car in neutral, hold in the brake with one foot while gently pressing the accelerator with the other. This worked, but was very tricky if you needed to stop on a hill.

My beagle will walk into the liviing room, look around like he’s never been there before, sniff the floor, lick where he sniffed, look at me (for dozens of seconds without moving or blinking) snort, cough, turn around and go back down the hall.

It’s quite the ordeal to simply make sure I didn’t release a gross of rabbits while he was napping on my pillow with his Frito smelling feet all up where my face will be later.

My first car, an awful dingy yellow 1976 Plymouth Duster, handed down to me from my mother. I appreciated it, however the car was a POS. Towards the end of it’s sorry life, the front end was so rusted out that I couldn’t adjust the camber enough to compensate and as a result both front tires would always wear through the inside edge of the tires. Just before I got rid of the car, I ended up using snow tires on the front because the tread was so deep that they would last longer.

A side effect of this issue was that I always had two full-sized spares in the trunk of the car and I could change a tire in under five minutes without breaking a sweat. The skills that poverty teach, eh?

I knew that you would have to write about your Blazer while on the topic of lemons. Every time I see a chevy logo on the front of a vehicle, I assume that it is a complete piece of crap. Your experience probably conditioned me to some extent, but I have heard other horror stories associated with this manufacturer. Also, just look at their stellar lineup of vehicles (past and present): Chevette, Cavalier, Citation, Lumina, Celebrity, Aveo…..

American cars have been a real crap-shoot during my adult life. That is why I have been forced to stay with the Japanese cars during my 3 decades of driving (two Toyotas, a Nissan truck, and a Subaru). I drove the first three for about 10 years each, and just started driving my fourth car a few months ago. I hope my good fortune with cars holds up with this new one! I’d love to be able to trust an American car brand with such a big purchase, but have been frightened away from them as a result of their apparent problems in manufacturing a reliably well-built car or truck. At least a couple of my Jap cars were built in factories located here in the states. I understand that there are certain Japanese vehicles that have more of a footprint in our domestic economy than some vehicles with an American company’s nameplate.

OK…I have very strong opinions about automakers, so hopefully I won’t wind up on that list from last week!
I bought a 2 year old 1989 Ford Aerostar and it was perhaps the most craptacular car–EVER! It was nothing but problems from about two weeks into it until the day I traded it in. A common quote from the plethora of mechanics that worked on it, “I’ve never seen that part go bad on a car before.” Yeah, it was like that for six and a half wonderful years!
On the flip side, I learned to become quite the mechanic myself. My “Haynes” manual was all dog-eared and worn after that turd from Ford. I vowed I would never own another Ford as long as I live and so far, so good. My two Toyotas are 9 and 10 years old and both are well over 100,000 miles and I’d take either one of them any day over a brand-new Ford!!

Maybe not the worst piece of crap I ever owned, but the one that pissed me off the most, was a 2010 Ford Fusion. Jesus J. McChrist, that car sucked. From 418 miles until I got rid of it a couple months ago with 20,005, the transmission would suddenly decide not to work, you know, just whenever it felt like it. Damn car would all of a sudden jump forward like a rabbit on a greyhound track or, just as suddenly, slip out of gear completely and leave me revving the engine for a few seconds before it would decide to catch again. Took in it 8 separate times only to be told (usually with a shrug) that “no codes come up.” WTF?? You’re a MECHANIC!! Do some mechanic-ing, for fuck’s sake and don’t rely on your goddamn computer to tell you what’s wrong. Tried to lemon law it, and Ford refused to buy it back. Because there was clearly nothing wrong with it because “no codes come up”. Grrr… Ended up trading it for a Jeep and I must say, I’m really happy with it so far. I hope the poor sucker who ends up with that Fusion knows a “real” mechanic.

Yeah, you won’t get any codes to tell you the transmission fluid is leaking out. There won’t be any for a vacuum leak either, or to tell you that the timing belt has jumped a tooth. If these guys don’t know how to do anything other than read codes, they are not mechanics so much as tools.
.

Funny enough, “My dog is a rescue” can also be filed under “50 Reasons Why Your Dog Might Be A Pain In The Ass”.

Hands down, my worst car was a Subaru Forester. I still have nightmares about the never-ending Check Engine light. Around its sixth year of barely-viable existence the transmission shit the bed, right as I was in the Costco parking lot loaded down with groceries. Piece of shit.

I had a Forester for a little over 11 years, and my check engine light was on for most of that time. The vehicle ran OK, but was costly to maintain compared to other cars I’ve had. So now I am back with Toyota.

I Inhertited a 1988 Oldsmobile Big Ass Coupe. It’s not so muh the car sucked – it was gorgeous in its heyday, but the poor thing was old and tired when I got it. It would stall every morning on the highway 4 miles short of where i had to park. There was always a bottleneck clusterfuck and I knew it would die. But I also had a lot of good memories with that car so it’s bittersweet.

The 2006 Kia Optima I’m now tooling around in is OK but not my favorite car.

And every time I see “50 Signs you could be a pain in the ass” I start humming Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave your lover” of course, with my own words…

“50 Ways to be a fucktard…. You crack your back, Jack, you reply to all, Paul, you back up to park, Spark… just listen to me..”

I had a Citroen that the engine would die in whenever you drove it in heavy rain, i.e. exactly the sort of weather you want to standing on the shoulder in while fucking about with cans of WD40 trying to get an engine running again. Merde!

LOL. The comments are a real treat today. Whoever it was that said their dog’s feet smell up their bed like Frito’s, you know you are lucky, doncha? I mean my dog’s, er, underbelly, smells up my pillow like a cloth baby diaper on a hot afternoon if I don’t forget to lay it on the nightstand when she has a nightmare (is she faking it?) and claws me outta bed at 4 a.m. She’s a big dog, so I just get up and wander to the couch, preserving my still drowsy state.
Now to the car–a brand new Ford Aerostar minivan. This is how I learned about searches for “[make, model] recall” on the internet, alas too late for this bitch of a car. It seems they designed that one with the emergency brake somehow impinging on the entire brake system. They got that one ironed out for me, but by then the transmission was weirding out all the time. By this time, the fine folks at the dealership all but pulled the blinds and locked the doors when they would see me coming, so about the third time they told me there was nothing wrong with the transmission, I took er out fer a spin. We lived in the good ol Mountain State at the time, so a spin meant a 4 hour drive up a godforsaken mountain in the middle of nowhere. I stopped at a gas station just as the interstate ended (they did that back then) and the back roads began, and asked the attendant to check the transmission fluid. It had been slipping on me for the past 2 hours, despite the fact I was driving on level ground on fresh interstate pavement. In short, I was pissed. So, when the guy told me the fluid level was fine, I shouted, “I’m gonna run it in the ground!” and peeled outta there. I actually made it back down out of the hills after visiting a cousin who lived on top of a mountain in Clay County, and back to a nice restaurant in the flatlands, just a few miles from the dealership. I parked here, ate a leisurely dinner with our kids, and called my husband to come get me (I sorta lost my nerve at this point and didn’t want to get stranded after all). Anyway, after he got us home, he drove the miserable thing on to the dealership lot and parked it nose butted up against their garage door. Story was, when they arrived next morning, they actually had to tow it to get it into the bay. Some things just warm yer heart when ya find em out. We had been educated by our attorney by this time, so when we went to court over the lemon law, we didn’t mention the dealership. They gratefully included a few extras on the brand new replacement van we got soon thereafter. All in all, it turned out well for us that time. There have been other times, but this is the one time I remember actively despising a vehicle I owned. I just wanted it to die, ya know….

Back in the 80’s I had a Shove-it (Chevette) biggest POS ever made. I could hear it rattleing in the driveway. If it was raining I would cringe, because the shit trap would not start, I had the distributor cap changed and all sort of crap checked out. If it rained…I was walkin’. Never will I own a chev again.

Easy! A 1974 Volkswagen Dasher. I could have bought a new Mercedes 240D for the same price $4,800. When I finally gave it to The March of Dimes or some charity the only thing that worked (I swear) was the click. I have to confess the 1973 Chevron Stepside PU I bought new comes in a close second. Just little things like the carburator just falling off randomly, or the fact you couldn’t drive it when it was raining because the floor boards rusted out in six months and they didn’t install Thomas”interior”.windshield wipes. Haven’t looked at a GMT product in 28years!

1973 Chrysler New Yorker. Bought it about 10 years old with 47,000 miles on it for $500.

There was a certain “combination” to get it to start. Crank the starter for 3 seconds, depress gas pedal twice to the floor, crank starter for 3 seconds again, depress gas pedal one time to the floor, crank starter for a third time again while pumping the gas pedal like a barber raising the chair.

My dad could not start that bitch to save his life, not even with starting fluid. I remember him calling me out of bed to start that damn car when he had to use it to go to work. Of course, by the time he made me go try to get it running, he had already flooded the carburetor and usually killed the battery after fucking with it for 20 minutes.

I believe I had the air conditioner repaired about 20 times, don’t know why I even bothered as it had only 2 vents and blew about 65 degree air and the fan speed must have been about 5 RPMs.

Almost forgot, it got about 5 miles per gallon, but I could do a burnout for about a quarter mile long.

We had a ’71 New Yorker with a 440 V-8 and 4 barrel carb. Even after two wrecks, it still floated like a cloud and would put sports cars to shame! It would go from 0-60 in nothing flat!
Dad finally got rid of it around 1980 when you were only allowed to get 8 gallons of gas per trip to the station. Heck, it would use that much gas just getting there! It was a guzzler.

1994 GMC Sonoma V6 4×4. It was such a POS I traded it before the warranty expired, knowing I’d never be able to afford the repairs. The guys at the Toyota dealer where I traded it later told me the new owner had it stolen. Then the next visit they said he got it back, and I said “that’s too bad.” Never again, GM. Never again.

Some bad cars… my first, which was a 1967 Ford Falcon that I bought for $250, might have been a decent car when it was new. But by the time I took possession, it was a clapped-out piece of shit with a penchant for eating differentials and transmission rear seals. The 1974 Vega cut its own distributor in half. The 1968 Mercedes 220 had perpetual electrical issues and valve clatter, with the added benefit of very expensive parts. The 1974 AMC Hornet was a sad clunker with collapsed lifters and a transmission fluid leak.

I did have a 1979 Ford Fiesta, and I really liked that car. Peppy, good handling, and I did a 30-second DIY performance mod.

I visited an old buddy last month, who had finally traded in his ancient Chevy Blazer (!) on a Japanese car. I have a three-year-old German car, and we concluded that however much one might like to buy American, the Axis Powers make pretty damned good cars.
.

1979 Monte Carlo. White and cream color. The transmission consistantly leaked fluid even after being replaced TWICE! Everytime I went at least 50 miles, I had to stop and check the oil. No matter where I was. I had to carry a case of 50 weight oil in the trunk. I was young and in school. So no money for a new car.

My pug, Bruno, is my shadow. He lays under my legs when I’m on the crapper for God sake. His breath smells like death on a cracker too. He acts like he’s being punished when he gets a bath. But the worst part is his shedding afterwards. Holy shit sticks! His fur comes out in sheets! It’s awful. There’s fucking hair everywhere!! He also runs around the house full of piss and vinegar.

Could be worse: at least Bruno’s piss and vinegar is inside of him, rather than slinging all over the house. My cats mostly use the box, but they are all “fiber animals” – from their sheddings you could get all of a family’s needs in the area of sweaters, hats, mittens, blankets, socks and pillow stuffing. Modulo allergies, of course. And in case anybody was wondering, cats have casket breath too.
.

I got rid of my nice truck and cars and bought a ’98 Ford Explorer Sport 4×4 for cash a couple of months ago – everything works. No payments. Smart, right? On the highway the other day something happened and it got hotter than fuck all the sudden. I pulled over and had it towed to a mechanic. The damage? He told me it would be just under $4,000. FUCK FUCK FUCK!

1976 Porsche 914. Battery leak over main frame caused the car to break in half 200 miles from home. As my buddy and I were scratching our heads over what to do, a drunk group of Marines decided we looked like a couple of guys who needed to “get rowdy” with. Good thing we had military ID’s. I should add that I was never happier than when that POS was running right, though. Fun car to drive. Expensive to fix.

1976 Chevy Monza. In 1989. Enough said. Looked like a dirty football on wheels. I “inherited” it from my step brother who had lost the key to the trunk. I kept praying that he hadn’t hidden a dead body or serious garbage in there because there was no way whatsoever to get in it. Completely DOA within 3 months.

1973 Chevy Nova…four door, straight six. My Dad bought it for me when I was 17, about 1984, because he was tired of me breaking his cars. This car was actually a cream puff in almost cherry shape when I got it but it didn’t get very good reviews from my gearhead buddies. Needless to say I didn’t take very good care of it, dents in every panel, maintenance very shoddy. The electric choke went out once and a new one was out of my price range so Dad helped me rig a manual choke on it, however the air cleaner lid wouldn’t fit so he went and bought a 4″ chrome air cleaner, talk about getting laughed at. Later on something went wrong with the ignition, you had to twist really hard on the key to get it to start until finally a week or two later it wouldn’t start. A buddy of mine crawled under and shorted a wrench across the starter and it fired up. So being the super star electrician I am, I just ran two wires from the starter to inside the car. Whenever I needed to go, turn the key on touch the two wires together and shazam!

Finally I gave the poor car two my little brother who promptly took a saw-zall to the roof, creating the largest sun-roof ever seen on a Nova. He pop riveted some tabs on the cut out roof section and would duct tape it back in place for bad weather. Dad finally got tired of looking at in and hauled off to the scrap yard.

Late ’80s Ford Escort GT. Something plastic broke inside the steering wheel and ripped out the wiring, which made it honk randomly when I turned the wheel. Had to replace just about every related part to fix it.

The final straw on that car was that the threads in the engine block for the spark plugs got stripped. Got that fixed as well as possible before I sold the car. I was rather relieved that the person who bought it totaled the car almost immediately and never discovered what a POS it was.